This was what it meant to be different. Even in the slightest means, deviance from conformity was punishable. The people feared change, and rightly so. The years of old had worn on the people; the endless battles of mind and mettle tore the very soul of them all until there was nothing left that mattered to their self-importance. And when there was nothing left to live for, it stopped. When there was nothing left to live for, the people wasted away, vanishing into the emptiness that was the void where the heart once stood. Hope had died long ago for all...

...but a scant few.

She held onto the future. Her father held her there, with desparate hope. She was the one chance they had left, and she held onto what was left of her life, after everything else was torn away. All she had left was to live, but living could not be in that moment, and in the following moments. Life would have to wait, for there was nothing to sustain it beyond the air.

So, what then was there to do?

He had the answer. Long he had held it, for he knew what was to come. He knew it before it came to pass. Her father built her a place, a sustainer to hold her until the earth came back to its old self. Until the new people would find her, she would be suspended in time, forever young, forever beautiful. And with tears she went. She, more than any of her people, had sustained the most grief. And yet, overcoming all, she held on with the most hope.

A hope for renewal that would cradle her life in silence for the next five thousand years.

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"Since that day of myth, my child, when the first lady Eve Chera was encountered by the Landed, it has been ten thousand years. Her dynasty lives on today. She is the mother of your cousin's people. Your uncle, my brother, married into the royal family, and it seems he is a pillar of strength to the empire. Aren't you excited to finally meet them?"

Yes, I was truly excited. Not only because I would be meeting my kinfolk, but also that I would be on of the first outside of the bloodlines to set foot in the ancestral lands. The vast empire that I was tied to by a marriage…It was like a fairytale. I was but an ordinary girl from Corellia; nothing special…and yet, and yet…to be accorded such a privilege by the dynasty of those said to be angels? So magical. A definite fairytale.

My peers would be most jealous. Undeniably so.

I had always wondered how my uncle, a man I had never met, had come to that place. A place thought to be legend. Many years I had begged my mother to tell me the story, but she too was entranced. One day, my child, she would say. One day I shall have your uncle himself tell you. She feared she would not get the tale right. To the Angelus, as outsiders such as myself learned to call them, a recounting of one’s personal history must not be passed on with error. To do so would tarnish it.

It would make the tale different. Imperfect, casting it away from conformity…Something I would find out for myself, as well, that breaking the conformity was not taken lightly. There were reasons, I was told.

Reasons of fear, of tarnished souls, of ancient memory wishing not to repeat what it had seen.

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Selinica Miriya D’aen Cailis woke in a cold sweat. Another day had preceded another nightmare; the same nightmare that had plagued her slumber for what seemed like more than an age. The power had overtaken her in that fateful time, and she could not resist. She had blamed herself at first for her own weakness, her susceptability. Then the depression over what she had done because of it, and finally, the anger. The fury.

The anger had consumed much, devouring her soul along with it. Soon enough, memory of how she had come to be what she is was nothing but mere trifle. At once, she had been at fault, according to herself. And just as quickly, she was no longer shameful. The darkness has a way of stealing your decency, replacing it with a menace that takes joy in depravity.

I care for nothing but the satisfaction of my lust. Blood flows freely, for as long as I release it at its beck and call.

They had seen it. The High Council, and its membership; Her elder brother, a most esteemed Jedi in his own right. She was the next in line to the throne of Imperium Evaie. Her blood was that of royalty! They could not touch her! Or so she thought…Until they had come for her. The First Son himself had come for her. He had done as he pleased, had his way with her, and left her to weep. A son had come of this indecent act, a son she would have to leave to the care of her brother and the council. There was no choice in the matter. She no longer had any such power to prevent it. She had been stripped of it.

She was only sixteen, and Damian Zean Cailis had come into a secrecy that he would be blind to for many of his first years. She was an exile. An outcast, a boiling kettle filled with the waters of vengeance.